MENA Effie Awards cel­e­brate win­ners

DUBAI: The re­gional win­ners of this year’s MENA Effie Awards were an­nounced at a cer­e­mony in the glam­orous en­vi­ron­ment of the Pav­il­ion, Ar­mani Ho­tel Dubai. This marks the eighth edi­tion of this an­nual pro­gram, which hon­ors the great­est and most ef­fec­tive mar­ket­ing cam­paigns in the re­gion. More than 1,500 peo­ple, in­clud­ing some of the most tal­ented mar­keters in the re­gion, at­tended a gala fi­nale, with awards across 23 cat­e­gories in what is widely con­sid­ered to be the gold stan­dard of re­gional cre­ative mar­ket­ing bril­liance.

Alexan­dre Hawari, Co-CEO of Me­di­aquest Corp, said: “The well-con­sid­ered and cre­ative en­tries this year at­tained an ex­tremely high stan­dard, pro­vid­ing a tremen­dously chal­leng­ing range of choices.”“We had some of the most notable and highly-re­garded re­gional cre­ative fig­ures par­tic­i­pat­ing as judges for these awards, to help us dis­tin­guish the best mar­ket­ing cam­paigns across the re­gion,” he added. “Both of these fac­tors mean that all of those who won at this oc­ca­sion can take great pride in the ul­ti­mate re­gional en­dorse­ment to­wards the qual­ity and ef­fec­tive­ness of a mar­ket­ing cam­paign, brand ad­ver­tiser or agency.”

Hawari con­tin­ued: “As or­ga­niz­ers of the MENA Effie Awards, we would like to con­grat­u­late all of this year’s win­ners. We would also like to give great credit to the run­ners-up, who came very close to be­ing wor­thy win­ners in close con­tests. This cer­e­mony proved to be a night to re­mem­ber for all in­volved in this bench­mark for re­gional mar­ket­ing suc­cess and I would like to thank ev­ery­one who or­gan­ised and par­tic­i­pated in an en­joy­able and re­ward­ing evening.”

Com­ment­ing on MENA Effie 2016, Ma­jed Al Suwaidi, Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor, Dubai Me­dia City, said: “Dubai Me­dia City spon­sored the MENA Effie 2016 Awards to re­it­er­ate the im­por­tance of fos­ter­ing a cre­ative ecosys­tem for the re­gion, es­pe­cially at a time when the wider in­dus­try un­der­goes a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion. Our en­dorse­ment to MENA Effie 2016 stems from our keen­ness in rec­og­niz­ing our busi­ness part­ners and the wider cre­ative com­mu­nity who are lead­ing change in the evolv­ing ad­ver­tis­ing in­dus­try.”

He added: “The en­gag­ing and thought-pro­vok­ing cam­paigns that we wit­nessed at the MENA Effie 2016 are a tes­ta­ment of the great work that is be­ing pro­duced re­gion­ally. We wit­nessed some in­te­grated cam­paigns that show­cased how brands are em­brac­ing new tech­nolo­gies to en­gage with con­sumers in a smarter and more ef­fec­tive way.” The win­ners un­der the Prod­uct & Ser­vices cat­e­gory were: Au­to­mo­tive: Leo Bur­nett Cairo for Re­nault Egypt; Travel, Tourism and Trans­porta­tion: Memac Ogilvy La­bel Tu­nisia and Memac Ogilvy Al­ge­ria for ONTT (Sil­ver)